Gabriel Sierra (San Juan Nepomuceno, Colombia, 1975) operates at the intersection of art, architecture, design, and language. Trained in industrial design, the artist explores the boundaries between form and function, thought and matter, space and perception, investigating how environments — especially architectural ones — affect our behavior and emotions, even when we are not consciously aware of their effects.
Having grown up in a small town in northern Colombia with no museums or art exhibitions, his artistic education initially came through books, films, and television. This background shapes his approach, marked by radical curiosity and a continuous desire to understand the creative impulse at its core. For Sierra, art has no clear or singular function — and perhaps this is where its power lies: in the space of freedom and imagination that opens up between thought and the materialization of an idea.
His research is driven by fundamental questions — where does language come from? What is the difference between sculpture and architecture, between nature and landscape, between art and philosophy? — as well as by a close attention to the details that structure everyday life: plans, lines, doors, windows, divisible spaces, fictitious objects, lapses in time. Simple forms or trivial situations acquire presence and become tools for thinking about the present.
Solo exhibitions include Recalque at Luisa Strina in São Paulo (2025); LUCY OTTER at Pippy Holsworth Gallery in London (2024); Subito dopo l’oggetto più distante at Galleria Franco Noero in Turin (2019); Horas de Museo at kurimanzutto in Mexico City (2019); The First Impressions of the Year 2018 (during the early days of the year 2017) at Secession Vienna (2017); Before Present at Kunsthalle Zürich (2015); and Numbers in a Room at SculptureCenter in New York (2015).
Selected group exhibitions: THE LAST ARRANGEMET, House of Seiko, San Francisco (2024); “Moment. Monument” Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland (2021); Amulet or He calls it chaos, The David Ireland House, San Francisco (2019); Matriz do Tiempo Real, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (2018); Latinoamérica: volver al futuro, MALBA Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires (2018); Spaces without drama or surface is an illusion, but so is depth, The Graham Foundation, Chicago (2017); First Day of Good Weather. Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf (2017);We’ve got mail III, Mostyn, Wales (2016); El Orden Natural de las Cosas. Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2016); APAP 5, 5th Anyang Public Art Project, Anyang City (2016); Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today. South London Gallery, London (2016).